Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading

NOJ / НОЖ: Nabokov Online Journal, Vol. I / 2007
death. Nabokov’s readers are habitually cheated of a chance to glimpse at afterlife the
way his dead characters, no matter how imaginative they may be, are cheated of
immortality altogether. As it happens to Edmund, a hero of Nabokov’s play Death, an
imaginative person can tell us something about death only by imagining himself dead. 9
This may be as far as Nabokov and Plato could possibly take us when writing about
death.
Such affinities between the two writers suggest that Invitation’s reference points
are more diverse than previously thought. Apart from creating recognizable parallels
between Cincinnatus and, for example, Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Gnostics,
Nabokov’s novel intentionally evokes such works of antiquity as Plato’s Phaedo, and
possibly (a subject for another essay) Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. 10 Such
conclusion, however, does not make it easy for us to understand Nabokov’s motive
behind the Platonic theme in his novel. If Nabokov introduced Platonic references merely
as a joke, an example of a writer who failed to grasp the mystery of death, then we can
conclude that Nabokov misread Plato’s highly literary works treat the subject of afterlife
in a way as complex as Nabokov’s own approach. Arguably, he underestimated Plato’s
appreciation of art which is cleverly hidden in the numerous and misleading expressions
of the philosopher’s disregard for art. Plato has to be appreciated not only as a
philosopher but also a literary figure—the way Nabokov can be admired for his artistry as
well philosophic insight. We can recall Nabokov’s words that a great novel unites “the
9 Nabokov’s Smert’ is one of his earliest works, a nearly forgotten play written in Russian, in verse.
Still untranslated into English, the play’s short summary is available in Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov:
The Russian Years (204).
10 Boethius (480-524 AD) was a philosopher and statesmen who was unjustly persecuted and executed
for conspiracy against King Theodoric. While awaiting his execution, he wrote a work titled Consolation of
Philosophy which, in Platonic fashion, combines philosophical and artistic pursuits.